Monday, December 31, 2012

Then there’s the problem of the 3,000 or so people Freedom Group employs. It does seem unfair for them to lose their jobs just because they help to make guns that kill people and animals. (Then again, maybe not.) Perhaps the moguls could also pony up for the cost of retraining these workers for other professions and for the cost of outplacement services.

Obviously, plenty of other companies would fill the manufacturing void left by Freedom Group’s demise. Yet the chance to eliminate from the face of the earth the largest gun manufacturer on the planet doesn’t come around very often, and presents those with exceptional means a rare opportunity to profoundly influence public policy in the current era of spineless amoebas inhabiting Washington.

But Ms. Feinstein is arguing that her bill will do more than just prevent future gun deaths. She and others believe that lax firearms control has harmed the reputation of the U.S. among its international peers, many of which impose much harsher limits on who can own guns and what types are sold.

“America has to bite the bullet of what these incidents mean to our people, to our nation and our nation’s standing in the world,” she said.

Psychological projection or projection bias is a psychological defense mechanism where a person subconsciously denies his or her own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, usually to other people. Thus, projection involves imagining or projecting the belief that others originate those feelings.

Projection reduces anxiety by allowing the expression of the unwanted unconscious impulses or desires without letting the conscious mind recognize them.

An example of this behavior might be blaming another for self failure. The mind may avoid the discomfort of consciously admitting personal faults by keeping those feelings unconscious, and by redirecting libidinal satisfaction by attaching, or "projecting," those same faults onto another person or object. -- Wikipedia.

A thief will always suspect you of stealing from him and liar will doubt your honesty. But what are we to make of people who reject well-reasoned arguments by falling back on allegations of mental illness and latent criminality? A case in point is Joe Biden, for the New York Times warns us that Biden Is Back for a 2nd Run at Gun Limits.

Never much known for restraint, Joseph R. Biden Jr. did not hold back during a presidential primary debate in 2007 when a voter asking about gun rights in a recorded video displayed a fearsome-looking semiautomatic rifle and declared, “This is my baby.”

Mr. Biden, then a Delaware senator in a dark-horse bid for the White House, shook his head. “I tell you what, if that’s his baby, he needs help,” he said. “I think he just made an admission against self-interest. I don’t know if he’s mentally qualified to own that gun.”

The candidate’s blunt, dismissive remark cheered one side of America’s long-polarized debate about guns and alienated the other.

How many times have you personally been called a "gun nut" or had your sanity doubted by some hoplophobe? Personally, I've lost count. Once, when a guy called me crazy, I tired of the game and said, "Well, I'm still armed to the teeth so that just complicates your problem, doesn't it?"

What you must understand is that, for collectivists, projection is a part of psychological operations designed to shape the battlefield in their favor. From an essay entitled "What Soviet PSYOP Mirror Imaging Can Tell Us by James Melnich (found in Psychological Operations, edited by Air Force Colonels Frank Goldstein and Benjamin Findley, 1996):

Soviet propaganda was rife with allusions to the ultimate enemy, whether the enemy be world imperialism, Nazi storm troopers, supporters of SDI, Zionism, or religious activists in the Soviet Union. The ultimate enemy was usually portrayed as being antihuman and opposed to everything the Soviet Union stood for. For example, Zionism was defined as a "deadly enemy of the Soviet Union from its very beginning." There was usually a plurality of Soviet ultimate enemies, depending on the international situation. An ultimate enemy in Soviet propaganda was first dehumanized, then made part of an anti-Soviet worldwide conspiratorial network (i.e., Afghan freedom fighters became bandits fighting as agents of US imperialism; unofficial religious figures in the Soviet Union were linked with dark forces from abroad).

In attempting to describe the ultimate enemy, whoever and whatever that might have been at a given time, Soviet propagandists sometimes drew from actual Soviet acts of barbarism. Thus their disinformation, as a form of mirror imaging, reflected back into the pool of Soviet reality. For one example, I will draw from personal experience.

In the early 1980s, I met a Soviet emigre woman who was convinced that evangelical Christians in the Ukraine sacrificed babies by rolling them in barrels with spikes as part of some religious ritual. She, of course, had never witnessed such a thing, but said that she heard about these people when she lived in the Soviet Union. Obviously, she was the victim of very gross Soviet disinformation -- and there were other Soviet campaigns in which other religious groups were under attack by the state. One can find numerous articles accusing Soviet Baptists of drowning children or performing other dark and perfidious acts -- the whole purpose being to defame the targeted group and further isolate them from the general population.

Nevertheless, the matter of the spikes continued to bother me: why such a particular disinformation image? Where did it come from? Did a propagandist simply make it up out of thin air, or did it spring from some other source? I have no final answer to this question, but a year or so later, when I was reading Michael Voslensky's work, Nomenklatura: The Soviet Ruling Class, a particular passage leapt out at me. Voslensky, in quoting a 1920s account about the Cheka (the earliest forerunner of the KGB), recounted various Cheka methods of torture and execution of their victims. One such method was reported this way: "at Voronezh they put their victims naked in barrels spiked on the inside and rolled them." This account and recent Soviet disinformation against religious groups are separated by more than one-half century. Are they somehow related, or did later Soviet propagandists simply make up the recent vicious accusation out of thin air? One cannot be certain, of course, but I would posit this as a possible example of a mirror image projecdted out of the past. (Pages 192-194)

The thing to remember is that this is what all collectivists do. Here's a thought: what if the new "assault Weapons Ban" floated by Diane Feinstein is simply a disposable red herring in order to facilitate an attack on private sales through the back door of "mental health"? The thing is, if you believe Biden and Company, all us firearm owners are crazy.

Just keep in your memory Melnich's phrase: "The whole purpose being to defame the targeted group and further isolate them from the general population." It explains a lot of what you're hearing these days, is a classic collectivist tactic and explains a lot of the "projection" going on.

Nobody knows precisely when and if this crisis will occur, but for now we'd do well to rely on the sagacity of one character in a Hemingway novel, who, when asked "how did you go bankrupt?" responds: "Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly."

I started out reloading with The Classic Lee Loader in .30 Carbine. It has been in production for over 50 years and still costs a modest 30 dollars (less if you can find a good used one at a gun show), and it works just fine. As the reader who recommended this link said: "Your group will need at least one." Here's the owner's manual.

Ooooh. This guy is so cartoonishly anti-American that if he didn't already exist, we'd have to invent him (sort of like CSGV). His confrontation with Larry Pratt has gone viral and he, with the help of Diane Feinstein, has done more to unite American firearm owners than anything else I've seen the past twenty years. I mean, why doesn't he threaten us with something we're scared of?

Personally, if he goes I will miss him. He daily reminds us all of the collectivist dangers we fight.

I read this article off American Thinker this afternoon, & thought I'd pass it on for you'all to post and pass on.

My 2 cents worth of thought -- anyone living in the areas affected by this "news"paper needs to go out and have a Boston Tea Party with this paper. Paint it, ruin it, cut it, rip it, destroy it, make it unreadable and unsellable. Unless the vending machines are the property of the "news"paper, leave 'em alone. They're the personal property of someone else trying to make an honest living. Same with stores, book stores, kiosks, and front porches - do not destroy. We want to keep the good will of the people with us.

Others have suggested that perhaps a small window war is in order. Of course my previous record on the the topic of Sons of Liberty tactics is matter of fact. But what I think is that at the moment we don't know enough about the economic links of this rag to the wider world -- stock holders, advertisers, etc. Perhaps they would like THEIR personal information posted for all to see.

Regarding the newspaper boxes themselves, one tactic that has been used in the past is the use of crazy glue squirted in the coin slots of the machine. Another is the use of a plastic or metal key to open the box through the coin slot (USA Today used a curved plastic piece) and removal of all the papers. Folks who don't have access to a key can simply, for the cost of one paper, avail themselves of a volume discount and remove ALL the newspapers from the box, depositing them in the trash some distance away.

It will be interesting to see what happens, now that these collectivist ideologues have raised the ante. As my correspondent says, "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes."

The purpose of having citizens armed with paramilitary weapons is to allow them to engage in paramilitary actions. The Second Amendment is not about Bambi and burglars — whatever a well-regulated militia is, it is not a hunting party or a sport-clays club. It is remarkable to me that any educated person — let alone a Harvard Law graduate — believes that the second item on the Bill of Rights is a constitutional guarantee of enjoying a recreational activity.

My post on the C-47 below generated some email, including these pictures:

Resupply of Bastogne, December, 1944.

Restored C-47 at airshow.

C-47 interior.

C-47s towing WACO CG-4A gliders.

Another view of C-47s towing on single ropes (they could pull up to four with VERY careful piloting in all craft.

Walter Cronkite, who went into Holland in a glider with the 101st ABN, described the experience as a "life-long cure for constipation."

How the C-47 would fly in and snatch a glider off the ground to bring wounded and special personnel out of a combat zone.

As part of my research for Absolved, I did a lot of research on glider warfare, including interviews with former glider pilots and glider infantry. I have a copy of the original Army Air Corps training film for snatch operations. It is narrated by a young Ronald Reagan.

When I am asked why I need a magazine for my “assault rifle” larger than 10 rounds, the answer is “because soldiers carry magazines larger than 10 rounds.” The 2nd Amendment was written to protect the people from more than just criminals. It was also understood that each sovereign state in the union would need to depend on its citizen militias to project power as needed. That meant well-armed men . . .

Some aircraft seem to fly forever. A prime example has been the DC-3/C-47. The latest revival for this iconic plane is a refurb that creates a 13 ton aircraft with a rebuilt and lengthened fuselage, upgraded wings, new engines, and modern electronics. Called the BT-67, it is in use by eight civilian (including the U.S. Forestry Service) organizations and nine air forces (including the U.S. Air Force and the Chinese Air Force). The BT-67 is about a meter (three feet) longer than the original DC-3 and 1.5 tons heavier. Cruising speed is 380 kilometers an hour, compared to 240 for the DC-3. Range is more than twice the 1,600 kilometers of the DC-3. Typical load for the BT-67 (4 tons) is also about twice what the DC-3 would normally haul. The longer range made the rugged BT-67 capable of delivering airfreight to research stations in Antarctica, from an airport in South Africa. The BT-67s cost about $5 million each.

Here's the link for the Basler BT-67, and here's a photo of one in Antarctica:

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” -- Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

I suppose that this is the "Founders wrote the Second Amendment at the time of single-shot smoothbore muskets so that's all you're guaranteed" argument illustrated in pen and ink.

I look at it as the visual expression of every modern tyrant's fear. Ten minutemen are replaced in the cartoon by ten rounds, a third of the standard capacity of an AR or AK. In other words, a ten-man modern minuteman squad carrying ARs and just one magazine per has an immediate firepower available of 300 rounds versus 10. Can there be any better illustration of the fear behind the tyrannical eyes of the advocates of citizen disarmament? THIS is why they have been striving mightily to ban semi-auto rifles.

I doubt that the cartoonist intended that reaction from our side, but that's what I see in this -- A picture worth a thousand tyrant's fears.

"If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them . . . Mr. and Mrs. America, turn 'em all in, I would have done it." -- Senator Diane Feinstein, CBS-TV, 60 Minutes, 5 February 1995.

I was intending to do a column on this, but the Soldier Systems' piece is a good place to start. Here's the deal. The NFA is so shot through with errors and problems of administration with the relatively small (and since 1986, finite) numbers of items subject to regulation that to dump tens of millions of semi-autos into it would collapse the damn thing in a welter of lawsuits and recriminations that would demand repeated oversight hearings of the ATF. (Think cockroaches and bright lights.) And that's ignoring the non-compliance and resistance it would bring from Three Percenters. The congressional hearings up front on this particular point would be a field day for our side -- an absolute field day. Ramsey A. Bear would probably be called to testify.

This is one loaded cigar that the gungrabbers (and certainly the ATF) shouldn't want to smoke -- if, of course, they have the sense that God gave a goose.

(The Act) requires that grandfathered weapons be registered under the National Firearms Act, to include:

* Background check of owner and any transferee;

* Type and serial number of the firearm;

* Positive identification, including photograph and fingerprint;

* Certification from local law enforcement of identity and that possession would not violate State or local law; and

* Dedicated funding for ATF to implement registration

Also, get this: "Bans large-capacity ammunition feeding devices capable of accepting more than 10 rounds." Bans, as in, we catch you with those in your gun safe you're a federal criminal. Oh, yeah, DiFi, I can really see you getting away with THAT without starting a civil war. Or not.

The people who want to advance “reasonable” gun control in the United States are myth-makers, and they should not be confused with the useful idiots who subscribe to their myths. They know that a ten-round magazine limit or a ban on scary-looking pistol grips wouldn’t have prevented the deaths of those children in Connecticut. They know that nothing short of a nationwide ban on firearms possession, combined with a thorough and merciless seizure of the 300 million weapons in private hands already, could significantly reduce the chances of another Newtown shooting.

They don’t care. In the phrase “gun control”, control should be emphasized. Control is its own reward. Power, as Orwell noted, is its own reward. It needs no other reason, no other justification. There’s no reason to seek out the golden heart behind the iron fist of gun control. It doesn’t exist. The armed citizen is not fully under control, even if his “assault weapon” never leaves his closet. There must be control.

Moving right along in America's gun control, er, "conversation," we now have the illuminating debate over the alleged criminality of "Meet the Press" host David Gregory. Somehow this seems appropriate to the quality of the rest of the gun debate.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Washington, D.C. police are investigating the notorious NBC News crime boss for using an unlawful rifle magazine as a prop for his Sunday program. The Post says Mr. Gregory had asked police for permission to acquire the 30-round rifle magazine, which is banned under D.C. law, but police refused. Mr. Gregory displayed the ammo anyway during his interview with Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association.

This has created an uproar, with gun rights advocates calling for Mr. Gregory's indictment, if not yet the death penalty, and police acknowledging their probe.

How perfect can you get? Mr. Gregory interrogates Mr. LaPierre on the subject of whether to ban a magazine that it is illegal for Mr. Gregory to display but apparently easy enough to acquire in time for a Sunday morning broadcast. So here we have a possible indictment that would be entirely nonsensical of a journalist who was trying to embarrass an NRA official over an ammunition ban whose impact would be entirely symbolic.

Various media are also reporting that an online petition is underway on the White House website calling for Mr. Gregory's indictment. It isn't clear that Mr. Gregory is guilty of anything other than perhaps overzealousness in pursuit of the conventional gun-control wisdom, which is not a crime unless we want to empty newsrooms and fill up jails from coast to coast.

A week after the Newtown massacre, The Journal News published an interactive Google Map with the names and addresses of gun permit owners in select New York cities. The bold move has escalated into a transparency arms race, after a Connecticut lawyer posted the phone number and addresses of the Journal‘s staff, including a Google Maps satellite Image of the Publisher’s home. “I don’t know whether the Journal’s publisher Janet Hasson is a permit holder herself, but here’s how to find her to ask,” read Christopher Fountain’s blog post. The double irony here is that open data was heralded as a tool of enlightened civic dialog, and has been co-opted for fierce partisanship, bordering on public endangerment.

Even under current law, mental illness can become a label for unconventional political beliefs. Remember Brandon Raub, the Marine Corps veteran who was forced to undergo a psychiatric evaluation in Virginia last summer based on his conspiracy-minded, anti-government Facebook posts?

The malleability of mental illness was also apparent at a 2007 debate among the candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination. After seeing a YouTube video in which Jered Townsend of Clio, Mich., asked about gun control and referred to his rifle as "my baby," Joseph Biden said: "If that's his baby, he needs help. ... I don't know that he is mentally qualified to own that gun. I'm being serious."

So perhaps excessive attachment to your guns should be grounds for taking them away. Biden, by the way, is in charge of formulating the policies the Obama administration will pursue in response to Lanza's horrifying crimes.

As far as I'm concerned, we need to keep him right where he is, reminding American firearm owners with his outrageous disarmament advocacy just exactly why we had a Lexington and Concord in 1775. Piers is the best advertisement for citizen disarmament lobby I can think of -- from our point of view. He's ignorant, stupid, wholly uninformed, rude, and so full of himself that in his recent clash with Larry Pratt I actually thought he might explode. He can't fail to alarm and outrage American firearm owners every time he opens his mouth. Thus, Piers is the best friend we've got in the national media, producing among traditional Americans a universal loathing and solidarity. We may disagree on finer points of liberty, but we all agree that Piers is a disgusting shill for American collectivist tyranny. He's too useful an idiot to send back to England.

I am going to reproduce it in its entirety because I don't know how long it will remain up on the Congressman's website now that he is retiring.

The senseless and horrific killings last week in Newtown, Connecticut reminded us that a determined individual or group of individuals can cause great harm no matter what laws are in place. Connecticut already has restrictive gun laws relative to other states, including restrictions on fully automatic, so-called “assault” rifles and gun-free zones.

Predictably, the political left responded to the tragedy with emotional calls for increased gun control. This is understandable, but misguided. The impulse to have government “do something” to protect us in the wake national tragedies is reflexive and often well intentioned. Many Americans believe that if we simply pass the right laws, future horrors like the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting can be prevented. But this impulse ignores the self evident truth that criminals don't obey laws.

The political right, unfortunately, has fallen into the same trap in its calls for quick legislative solutions to gun violence. If only we put armed police or armed teachers in schools, we’re told, would-be school shooters will be dissuaded or stopped.

While I certainly agree that more guns equals less crime and that private gun ownership prevents many shootings, I don’t agree that conservatives and libertarians should view government legislation, especially at the federal level, as the solution to violence. Real change can happen only when we commit ourselves to rebuilding civil society in America, meaning a society based on family, religion, civic and social institutions, and peaceful cooperation through markets. We cannot reverse decades of moral and intellectual decline by snapping our fingers and passing laws.

Let’s not forget that our own government policies often undermine civil society, cheapen life, and encourage immorality. The president and other government officials denounce school violence, yet still advocate for endless undeclared wars abroad and easy abortion at home. U.S. drone strikes kill thousands, but nobody in America holds vigils or devotes much news coverage to those victims, many of which are children, albeit, of a different color.

Obviously I don’t want to conflate complex issues of foreign policy and war with the Sandy Hook shooting, but it is important to make the broader point that our federal government has zero moral authority to legislate against violence.

Furthermore, do we really want to live in a world of police checkpoints, surveillance cameras, metal detectors, X-ray scanners, and warrantless physical searches? We see this culture in our airports: witness the shabby spectacle of once proud, happy Americans shuffling through long lines while uniformed TSA agents bark orders. This is the world of government provided "security," a world far too many Americans now seem to accept or even endorse. School shootings, no matter how horrific, do not justify creating an Orwellian surveillance state in America.

Do we really believe government can provide total security? Do we want to involuntarily commit every disaffected, disturbed, or alienated person who fantasizes about violence? Or can we accept that liberty is more important than the illusion of state-provided security? Government cannot create a world without risks, nor would we really wish to live in such a fictional place. Only a totalitarian society would even claim absolute safety as a worthy ideal, because it would require total state control over its citizens’ lives. We shouldn’t settle for substituting one type of violence for another. Government role is to protect liberty, not to pursue unobtainable safety.

Our freedoms as Americans preceded gun control laws, the TSA, or the Department of Homeland Security. Freedom is defined by the ability of citizens to live without government interference, not by safety. It is easy to clamor for government security when terrible things happen; but liberty is given true meaning when we support it without exception, and we will be safer for it.

"The man who laughs has simply not yet had the terrible news." -- Bertolt Brecht, "To Those Born Later", part of the Svendborg Poems (1938)

Henry Blodget in his natural element.

On 23 December, Business Insider ran an article on the post-Sandy Hook rush which included two photos taken at a gunshop, the West Coast Armory in Bellevue, Washington. Here is the store on 14 December:

Here is the same store on 20 December:

Blodget explains for his equally clueless readers:

In the days following the massacre of 27 adults and children at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, there have been many reports of skyrocketing gun sales.

Second, they worry that the latest massacre might finally wake up America to the absurdity of its gun laws and lead to a clampdown in gun control.

Uh, huh. Well, Henry is out of his element here, being the co-founder, CEO/Editor-in-Chief of The Business Insider, which according to Wikipedia "is a blog about Internet business trends and research."

A former top-ranked Wall Street analyst, Henry is also the host of Yahoo Daily Ticker, a digital video show viewed by several million people a month. He is often a guest on CNBC, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and other networks. He has contributed to The Atlantic, Slate, Newsweek International, The New York Times, Fortune, New York, the Financial Times, and other publications. He has written extensively about technology and investing and is the author of The Wall Street Self-Defense Manual: A Consumer's Guide to Investing.

During the dotcom boom of the late 1990s, Henry was a top-ranked Wall Street Internet analyst. He was later keelhauled by then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer over conflicts of interest between research and banking and booted out of the industry.

Henry went to Yale. He was born and raised in New York.

"Keelhauled." Well that's one way of putting it. Wikipedia reports:

In 2002, then New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, published Merrill Lynch e-mails in which Blodget gave assessments about stocks which allegedly conflicted with what was publicly published. In 2003, he was charged with civil securities fraud by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He agreed to a permanent ban from the securities industry and paid a $2 million fine plus a $2 million disgorgement.

So, how about if we limit access to something that factors into every gun massacre that the Constitution doesn't address at all:

Ammunition.

What if we keep semi-automatic weapons freely available but strictly control the manufacture, distribution, and sales of bullets?

You'd still have a civil war, Henry. Actually, attacking the ammunition supply would be guaranteed to outrage the Fudds as well, thereby negating the masterful campaign of the antis to split us apart by convincing the Fudds that they can keep their "good guns" while banning our "bad guns."

Obviously Henry hasn't heard about the Law of Unintended Consequences, Bill Clinton's rules of engagement for the Serb media elite in 1999 or Fourth Generation Warfare. He lives in his Gotham bubble now, a frightened, clueless yet frivolous idiot, selling futures contracts on the next American civil war, blithely unaware of the real world.

He expects, no doubt, that the armed guards of the government will protect his bubble. Here is another Brecht poem that speaks to that misapprehension:

General, dein Tank ist ein starker Wagen.

Er bricht einen Wald nieder und zermalmt hundert Menschen.

Aber er hat einen Fehler:

Er braucht einen Fahrer.

General, dein Bomberflugzeug ist stark.

Es fliegt schneller als ein Sturm und trägt mehr als ein Elefant.

Aber es hat einen Fehler:

Es braucht einen Monteur.

General, der Mensch ist sehr brauchbar.

Er kann fliegen und er kann töten.

Aber er hat einen Fehler:

Er kann denken.

General your tank is a powerful vehicle.

It smashes down forests and crushes a hundred men.

But it has one defect:

It needs a driver.

General, your bomber is powerful.

It flies faster than a storm and carries more than an elephant.

But it has one defect:

It needs a mechanic.

General, man is very useful.

He can fly and he can kill.

But he has one defect:

He can think.

-- "General, Your Tank Is a Powerful Vehicle", in "From a German War Primer", part of the Svendborg Poems, 1938.

An abandoned German tank in a field. -- From the archives at Yad Vashem.

Or, more to the point, Henry, what if those weapons are turned on your safe little green zone if you get the civil war you are soliciting? Just an academic, hypothetical question, of course.

We knew that after the withdrawal of the American troops, things would change and this would be a normal thing to happen in Iraq. America came to this country, spent huge amounts of money and have sacrificed lives. But they handed over the keys to others.

TIME: To the Iranians?

Barzani: I said to others, okay [laughs]. Whatever problems, whatever you like, they have left all these problems behind. I’ll pose a question: Why did you come to Iraq? What’s the reason? If the only intention was to hand over Iraq’s keys to others, then why did you come? Why? This is really the question for Americans. Therefore, America is also responsible for the situation and what happens now. There is a moral responsibility on the United States. Because until the last moment when then Americans were here they did not help us to solve these problems. And they knew that these were problems that would linger. How does Baghdad act? Baghdad believes or perceives that they will be stronger, but especially I’m talking about Prime Minister Maliki, he’s waiting for F16s and M1 tanks, and being in that strong position to come and talk to us. To impose a solution on us. Imposing any kind of solution would create a problem on the ground.

What stands in the way, this time as last time, is misunderstanding. Aid organizations in the West and governments in the developing world, motivated by myths of village tranquillity, pay people to stay rural rather than to consolidate their holdings and modernize their farming. Too many people believe, falsely, that a shift to commercial agriculture means a shift to big or exploitative farms, rather than more income for small farmers. We allow superstitions about engineered crops to become progress-blocking policies. We let meaningless middle-class fetishes for “organic” or “local” foods pollute the debate, when what’s needed is more protein, now.

Sunday, December 23, 2012

Just how do you shut down underground craftsman who don’t seem to require much more than their skills, some scrap metal, and access to Third-World tools that barely begin to compare to the equipment in the garages of many Western suburbanites?

That’s a rhetorical question. The evidence suggests that underground manufacturers will step up to meet any demand that arises.

Apart from the shows, gun shops around the nation have been swamped with customers seeking to get a jump on a feared federal crackdown. Scott Austin, owner of Tucker Gun, a shop on U.S. 29 in Tucker, called it “the apocalypse of gun control.”

“You’ve got nothing to lose now. The Democrats always want to take your guns,” he said.

Austin, who stocks assault-style weapons and owns one himself, said he does not see the need for such a weapon, but that’s not the point.

“We don’t need the government telling us we don’t need them,” he said. “This is America. You buy what you want.”

But Austin said there are some restrictions even he could live with, such as closing the so-called “gun show loophole” that allows individuals who are not licensed dealers to exchange guns without any paperwork or a criminal background check.

“I’ve been saying that needs to go for 20 years,” he said. “If they did away with gun shows altogether it wouldn’t bother me. Then they’d have to come to me.”

So, if you want to gift your grandpa's shotgun to your son, both of you would have to get approved by the Feds and it's okay with this scumbag bastard.

Amid talk of reinstating the assault weapons ban that expired eight years ago, police departments nationwide are thinking of ways to confiscate such weapons.

As WCBS 880’s Marla Diamond reported, among the departments considering taking action is the NYPD. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said if Congress were to reinstate the ban, police are wondering whether it will be their responsibility to confiscate them.

From the battle at Concord to the battle at Yorktown, Patriot troops fought armed Loyalists as well as British troops. By one tally, Loyalists fought in 576 of the war's 772 battles and skirmishes. Relatively few of these Loyalist-Patriot clashes get much mention in military chronicles. But they did strengthen the solidarity of the Loyalists. They were not merely opposing the Revolution; they were fighting and dying to end it.

Black April: {The Fall of South Vietnam, 1973-75 by George J. Veith. This work, the most exhaustively researched on its topic to date, will challenge what you think you know about the fall of South Vietnam. It doesn't whitewash the military and regime failures of the RVN regime, but it makes plain that they could have held out had we not sold them out by withholding military support.

Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent. This is an amazing book, both for understanding how we got to our present over-powerful federal leviathan and in the parallels to today's firearm prohibitionists.

For example, did you know that we got the income tax because the "Drys" could not overcome the argument that the federal government could not exist without the liquor excise taxes, so they threw their weight behind the income tax to facilitate the ban on liquor? And then, when Prohibition collapses under its own contradictions, that we got the National Firearms Act of 1934 at least in part because the bureaucracy wanted to find employment for the out-of-work Prohibition agents? This is fascinating and timely reading.

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

On the efficacy of passive resistance in the face of the collectivist beast. . .

Had the Japanese got as far as India, Gandhi's theories of "passive resistance" would have floated down the Ganges River with his bayoneted, beheaded carcass. -- Mike Vanderboegh.

In the future . . .

When the histories are written, “National Rifle Association” will be cross-referenced with “Judenrat.” -- Mike Vanderboegh to Sebastian at "Snowflakes in Hell"

"Smash the bloody mirror."

If you find yourself through the looking glass, where the verities of the world you knew and loved no longer apply, there is only one thing to do. Knock the Red Queen on her ass, turn around, and smash the bloody mirror. -- Mike Vanderboegh

From Kurt Hoffman over at Armed and Safe.

"I believe that being despised by the despicable is as good as being admired by the admirable."

From long experience myself, I can only say, "You betcha."

"Only cowards dare cringe."

The fears of man are many. He fears the shadow of death and the closed doors of the future. He is afraid for his friends and for his sons and of the specter of tomorrow. All his life's journey he walks in the lonely corridors of his controlled fears, if he is a man. For only fools will strut, and only cowards dare cringe. -- James Warner Bellah, "Spanish Man's Grave" in Reveille, Curtis Publishing, 1947.

"We fight an enemy that never sleeps."

"As our enemies work bit by bit to deconstruct, we must work bit by bit to REconstruct. Be mindful where we should be. Set goals. We fight an enemy that never sleeps. We must learn to sleep less." -- Mike H. at What McAuliffe Said

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.